Featured Poetry
Azalea
Retracing my fingers over
Those marks you left on
The middle of my rib cage
When you pulled my soul
Out of my body and ran
Your tongue over its edges.
That wildfire burning in you
That soothing summer rain
But you’re gone now, and
I am just a crumbled azalea
In the palm of your hands+
-Kailey Boronat
Bull In A China Cabinet
Once upon a storm
There Was A Princess,
A Bull In A China Cabinet,
(Rather.)
Though Rare,
And Difficult To Attain;
(At Perfect Harmony,)
A Determined Bull
Will Always Be Enticing.
Though,
The China Cabinet May Ruin;
In The Slightest Scare,
You Walk Away…
(Fear Of Blood.)
You Always Return
To Repair The Glass.
For A Sheep
Will Never Fulfill,
Stimulate,
(Satisfy,)
To The Extent Of The Bull.
A Painted Dresser
Will Never Appeal;
Toward The Eye,
Which Once Adored
A Now Broken Glass,
(Devine Toll.)
This Unsatisfied Longing
Will Lead A Prince To Become Mad:
Picking Up Every Last Sliver
To Attain The Anomaly,
(He Once Cherished.)
The Bull Will Great Him,
With The Up-Most Dazed Eye;
(Patiently Awaiting His Gentle Diligence.)
As Stunning Rays Of Gold Shout,
(Within His Pupil,)
Stretching Their Beauty
From A Hazel Eye;
(Through The Last Parcel Of Glass.)
The Mess Will Become Forgotten,
(Mistakes Overlooked,)
Leaving Nothing:
A Boy And A Girl,
A Prince
And His Fragile Princess,
Tattoos…
And A Bull In A China Cabinet.
– TJ Sparkes
Second Bloom
The first blush rush
With all its newness
Intoxicates
In the full Reproduction dance
The petals fade as seeds ripen
And fall as water dwindles…
But then come the
Late rains
The ones that reinvigorate
That restore
That push one more
Full. Bloom.
In that time
On the battleground of green leaf and red leaf sisters Is a second chance
To unfurl fully
In dewy glory
In ebullient explosion
Of the glowing star embers
– Laura M. Periman, MD
collar bones
i’ve measured them
both perfect
both strong
each of your collar bones are exactly four kisses long
but some nights
i pretend they’re 400 kisses long
– Rachelle Cochran
Nature-lover
Snow has whitened the street.
Birds make small dark shapes
against white hills. Birds chirp
on my window sill. The feeder
is full. I’m such a good person,
feeding birds. But that old guy
shuffling by, in a torn overcoat,
no hat, sneakers that must be
soaked through – tell me, who,
just who, will feed him?
– Penelope Schott
Refoulement
Q’anjob’al is an alien language in a U.S. court of law.
What Mayans have left Guatemalan highlands,
escaped the Sinaloa through Mexico, then
learned Spanish in time to battle
laws written in English and
served by English
speakers in
the USA
?
Ana begged the judge, “Leave me in a cell, please.
Leave me in a cell.” What did she escape to
ask for this? Unspeakable and perhaps
unheard by the ears who could tilt
and balance like the scales of
Lady Justice. Q’anjob’al is
alien, finds
no ears.
Their home grounds were already fouled at leaving,
at birthing of their children, at marriages to
their mates, at first plots of gringo
conspirators, at first lust after
their markets and contras.
Foreign guile seeped
ppm into mamas’
placentas.
Casa del Migrante in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico is bricked
red like a firehouse, an iron gated early warning.
Bienvenidos hermanos y hermanas migrantes,
and they come and go in neon colors
through El Paso until the desert
slakes them or the ICE
in Texas breaks
them.
– Kannon McAfee
In Like A
April slithered in and around the narrow windy path
(some might call a road)
in a 1995 Jeep with the shocks worn down,
feeling every bump
every rock,
luckily the brakes,
thank the gods, the brakes
allowed for some measure
of peace and insurance,
the kind that has to be paid for, but
insurance all the same
grasp the oh-shit-handle, and hang on,
just hang on over the cacophony under you
we’ll be off the mountain shortly
white-knuckling our way down and out and through
– Ashton M. Weis
Out on The Street
What’s a kid like that
doing out in the cold
North of nothing and
not too well-dressed
How did she get herself
into her mess
too bad how we all got our own distress
yet
attention is fleeting
and memory is short
Nobody knows
and no one is asking
the cars flying by
how fast they’re passing
busy with her own business
she’s not theirs
for the tasking
how much colder is the world
if everyone sees
yet nobody cares
we’ve all got plenty of troubles
none for the asking…
But what’s a kid like her
doing out in the cold
listlessly, aimlessly
sleep walking
where is her home
Is it here, is it there
and yet without hesitation
the foot hits the accelerator
and you turn up the heat
quickly forgetting
the girl on the street.
– Melissa Howells
Sub Specie Aeternitatis
Under the aspect of eternity
in a moment
that won’t repeat
Stars race
to the edge
though
there
is
no
edge
Light doesn’t
stop traveling
neither do we
After
the
rain
falls
it
– Richard Wells
Collected Poetry
C. Procinsky
Poem 1
Poem 2
Rachelle Cochran
collar bones
perfect
home
human
Andrea Isom
Fault Lines
Uncoupled Distortion
Richard Wells
Sub Specie Aeternitatis
Ansley Flores
On Widowhood
Kailey Boronat
The Master Gardener
Grieving You is a Garden
Kannon McAfee
Refoulement
Ode to Portland’s Cherry Trees in Spring
Glossary of Progress With Obituary
TJ Sparkes
Once Upon A Storm
Untitled
Penelope Schott
Penelope Schott
Nature-lover
How a truck chooses the path of its soul
Melissa Howells
Taking Up Alley Living
Out on The Street
Ashton M. Weis
In Like A
Sail
Wake
Paint